Flatline wrote on Mar 26, 2023, 22:14:

Acleacius wrote on Mar 26, 2023, 21:54:

Flatline wrote on Mar 26, 2023, 18:19:

Acleacius wrote on Mar 26, 2023, 14:04:
Right, it's so ambiguous, the girls could have agreed to pay his legal fees.
Then he paid them the $750k, if they agreed to never speak about it again.

That's not how settlements work. That's not how court works. If you pay the other side's legal fees, you've lost. You can't be making this argument in good faith. They literally 100% retracted what they were saying. If you paid someone to go away they'd never publish a "we 100% didn't mean the words we said" statement. They're admitting guilt in exchange for a settlement and dismissing the charges with prejudice, which means that he can't sue them again for this.

This is a settlement so it's not based on the merits, but let's put it this way, the defendants figured that attorney's fees plus a 7 figure payout is *less* than what they'd pay if this went to court.

The whole point was the statement was ambiguous and anything could be taken from it.
To the retraction, it was clearly written for them and 'they' didn't speak.
Iirc, they never said he assault them but was commenting on him and the allegations against him.
They clearly got caught up in the moment, you know like the fascist news network does, every 10 seconds.
You maybe correct, but once again the idea of how this is being handled public, is too ridiculous to be taken at face value.
But fell free. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Still not sure if you're intentionally obtuse or if it comes naturally. The "fascist news" bit is wild.

Or maybe you're not familiar with how US civil legal proceedings work in a fundamental sense? If you have any basic concept of how civil law works the statement, while moderately poorly written, can not "mean anything". That's like arguing that if I said I was holding an apple and let go of it then "anything" could happen next because you don't know what gravity is and then blaming *me* for not explaining gravity to you before saying I let go of the apple.

Also of course the statement was prepared by lawyers. It'd be idiotic to make a sworn official statement (there is an easily found https://twitter.com/erikkain/status/1639509491816484864 scan of the statement since apparently you don't believe anything actually happened) without your lawyer writing it for you when it comes to seven figure settlements. This is how legal proceedings work.

I don't get how this is too ridiculous. This is precisely how a civil settlement works. The details are more or less private, a public statement is made, end of story. Avellone's settlement demands probably included a retraction letter.

I have no idea what kind of person Avellone is beyond this but his two accusers didn't feel that they had enough evidence to make it to trial and win a defamation lawsuit against an arguably public figure. In defamation lawsuits with public figures, you have to prove actual malice, not just that you were wrong, but that you intentionally meant to harm the person you defamed by spreading knowingly wrong information, or information that you know you should have doubted/checked and spread it anyway, specifically to inflict harm, in order to win. It's an astonishingly high bar. That they settled means that the lawyers felt that there was compelling evidence that the defendants were not only wrong, but intentionally wished to inflict harm by spreading false statements. If it had merely been he said/she said, the lawsuit would have gotten thrown out and no settlement would have occurred.